Depression, visual acuity, comorbidity, and disability associated with age-related macular degeneration☆
Section snippets
Participants
Participants in this study were community volunteers enrolled between February 1998 and September 1999. This article examines screening and baseline data from a randomized clinical trial to further test the effects of a psychosocial intervention3 for people with advanced AMD. Individuals were recruited who met the following inclusion and exclusion criteria: (1) diagnosis by an ophthalmologist of AMD confirmed by fundus photographs; (2) visual acuity of 20/60 or worse in the better eye and
Descriptive analyses
As shown in Table 1, subjects were similar in age, ethnicity, and gender to those most likely to have advanced AMD. Almost 40% of the subjects were married at the time of the interview, and more than half of the subjects (61%) lived with at least one other person.
As shown in Table 2, visual acuity ranged from 20/60 to 20/8000. The median visual acuity was 20/200 (legally blind) in the better eye. Wilcoxon tests were performed to compare the disability scores of subjects with wet and dry AMD.
Discussion
Forty-nine of 151 elderly adults with advanced macular degeneration were found to have a depressive disorder. This rate (32.5%) is approximately twice as high as that found using similar standard diagnostic methods in general populations of older adults living in the community40, 41, 42 and is comparable to that found in outpatients with life-threatening diseases such as cancer and cerebrovascular disease.43, 44 To our knowledge this is the first study of AMD to examine the prevalence of
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Supported in part by grant RO1 EY 11924 from the National Eye Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.